Listening to Jeremy Vine on Radio 2 a few minutes ago. The discussion was about why South Africa had so far refused to deal with Mugabe’s murderous regime despite the recent loss of any last vestige of democratic legitimacy.

Cue Brendan O’Neill, editor of Spiked, and self-appointed keeper of the Left’s conscience (yes, another one…). Why should Thabo Mbeki do the west’s “imperialist” bidding, asks O’Neill, and already I could smell the stench of right wing apologia. All of Zimbabwe’s ills lie not at the door of Mugabe or his henchmen, but – you guessed it – the west. Never mind that the ordinary people of Zimbabwe seem already to have made their minds up about Mugabe, or that they’re being denied the president they voted for. According to O’Neill, the most important factor in all of this is Britain’s colonial past. Apparently.

I doubt if the victims of the regime would be happy with that level of complacency. O’Neill probably also reckons that calling coffee without milk “black” is racist. And imperialist. Why not?